The Criminally Minded
by Invaderk
Summary: This is a dump site for all of my little Criminal Minds stories. Most will be Reid-centric. Here you will find various genres and pairings,  as I do not support any one pairing for this fandom. Enjoy!
1. Sleuth Work

A/n: This is by no means a piece of fine writing craftsmanship, but it was sure as hell fun to write! I probably would not have even done so, were the images not so provocative. You'll see. ;)

Title: Sleuth Work

Rating: T

Pairings/Characters: Prentiss, Garcia, JJ, Reid/OC (questionably)

Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds, CBS, or anything at all from or in regards to this story.

Happy Reading!

* * *

_Sleuth Work_

Her suspicion begins with a handshake. Being in the FBI means one big dinner after the next, all formal affairs in which Emily easily becomes bored once the novelty of free wine and cheese wears off. There's the semi-annual grant meeting, the every-other-monthly staff development circuit. She wears nice outfits, brushes off the sensation of just a few too many drink-glazed eyes on her neckline, and takes two ibuprofen right at the start so that she can manage to smile all evening while her feet throb in too-tall stilettos.

One meeting, every meeting the same. It's the same faces—the BAU men looking sharp in suits, the ladies rocking their paychecks via Vera Wang and whatever designer is in season. Shaking hands with vague acquaintances and the occasional stranger. Nodding at small talk, laughing at the same joke the guy from PR told last time. Listening to the lecturer while sipping on her weak wine and trying to get as buzzed as possible without crossing the border into Drunkenland.

And then, just when she thought that nothing about these events can surprise her, something does.

Emily contemplates what she saw all weekend. By the time Monday arrives, she's convinced herself that something was slightly out of place, and goes to the professionals for advice…

"Wait, wait, explain it again, I must bemissing something," JJ says, shaking her hands by her head as if confused beyond reason. "Okay, so you're chatting with the hot girl from white collar—what's her name?"

"Eileen Martineau. And she's the new _head_ of the white collar department, not just some random hot girl," Emily responds.

"Right, Eileen. Okay, so you grab Spence to introduce him to her, and he… what? He shakes her hand, right?"

Emily nods at Garcia and JJ, both of whom are looking back at Emily as if she's got a second head sprouting from her shoulders. Garcia's slouched sideways in her chair with her chin in one hand, evidently more confused by this exchange than anything else. JJ has remained skeptical thus far, her arms folded across her chest. Upon seeing these expressions, Emily sighs and pulls the other two women up from their seats.

"Okay, look. I'll be Reid. JJ, _you_ be me. Garcia, you can be Martineau."

"Ooh la la," Garcia says, smirking as she takes her place across from JJ.

"Now, JJ, pretend like you've been having the usual soft skill conversation. And then Reid walks by, and you pull him aside to introduce the two of us. I'll show you exactly what he did. Act like we're all holding wine glasses, all right? And Garcia, when JJ introduces us, just nod at first and then go with what I do."

"Let's do this."

Straightening her pose as she prepares to act, JJ pretends to break away from conversation with Garcia as Emily approaches. She grab's Emily's arm and Emily calmly complies with the gesture to come right up alongside the other two.

JJ begins, "Reid, have you met Eileen? She's the head of the white collar crime department. Eileen, this is Spencer Reid."

Garcia, at first, only gives him a casual nod. Emily, however, makes the effort to switch her invisible wine glass from her right hand to her left, then reaches across the gap. In turn, Garcia reciprocates. Their hands clasp briefly.

"Spencer Reid," Emily introduces herself.

"Eileen Martineau," Garcia replies, her red-painted lips curving into a smile. "It's a pleasure to meet you, _Spencer_."

"Same to you, Eileen. Excuse me…"

And with that, Emily coolly starts off in the opposite direction, switching her glass back to her right hand as she moves. When she turns around, she's pleased to see that the other women have replaced their skeptical faces with ones of amazement.

"I swear it happened just like that," Emily assures the other two. "He actually made the effort to _switch hands_ and initiate the handshake, and then disappeared without making small talk or telling her that he's read all of her books. I've never seen him react like that before—and to a well-known and smoking hot department head, no less! It was amazing."

"_How_ hot is this girl, exactly?" asks Garcia. She can barely contain her glee, rising up on the balls of her feet and almost bouncing with energy.

"Tall, blonde, and sculpted," says Emily. "I told you this was serious, didn't I?"

"Wow." Taken aback, JJ shakes her head. The realization sinks in, slow at first and then becoming a steady trickle of confidence. "Do you know what that _means?_"

"Does it mean that we get to break the no inter-team profiling rule?" Emily asks, hopeful.

Garcia actually laughs. "Emily my love, if it means that we get to find out if Dr. Reid is twiddling Ms. Martineau's padiddle, then you won't be able to stop me from digging this one up."

xxx

Whether by coincidence or a stroke of good luck, the team experiences an uncharacteristic ebb in cases, which leaves them to research and deskwork. This break in travel also means that Emily spends more time on the Reid Romance case than she probably should. Once Garcia practiced her magic on Eileen Martineau's file, the three discovered that Martineau is not only a specialist in white collar crime, but a highly-ranked chess player to boot. At this news, they practically considered the mystery solved—at least until Garcia also noted that Reid and Eileen had only been in the same room a handful of times since her appointment six months prior. The gaping holes in their logic don't really matter, though. The very idea of Reid hitting it off with the stunning department head is enough to spur their enthusiasm past the gaps. Trying to inconspicuously weasel information out of an apparently oblivious Reid quickly becomes something of a sport.

Emily, whose desk sits closest to Reid's, attempts a less direct approach.

"Hey Reid, can I ask you for some advice?"

Reid looks up from his almanac of obsessive crimes to find Emily staring at him from across the desks, her hands folded atop a stack of file folders.

"Sure, I guess," he answers.

"Well," she begins, offering him a shy smile. "I'm going out tonight… I guess you could call it a date."

Reid's eyebrows contract. "A date? With who?"

"That's not important," she says hastily, brushing off his question with the wave of her hand. "But here's the thing—he's dated a lot of blondes in the past, and I'm clearly not a blonde. What I can't decide is whether or not to mention it to him."

"I'm not sure I'm the right person to ask about this," comes the response, one headshake later. "I don't have nearly sufficient experience in that field to answer your question with any kind of certainty. I _do_ know that I wouldn't want to give you the advice that ruins dinner."

"I'm sure you've had some sort of… I don't know. Similar issue. Do you think that it would be rude of me to ask?"

"Do you know who you're talking to?" says Reid, clearly nonplussed.

Emily chuckles slightly, as if she hasn't realized until now that she's been trying to get dating tips out of Spencer Reid. Conceding with a small smirk, she picks up her pen, examines it for a few seconds, and then sets it back down a pile of paperwork.

Reid 1, Emily 0.

xxx

The others play their part as well, but to a similar effect. On a Friday night following a week of arduous paperwork, Garcia spontaneously decides that a trip to the bar is in order.

"Usually we can get him to come with us," she explains to Emily and JJ in hushed tones as they prepare a pot of coffee. "But if he _is_ in a relationship, he's not going to want anything but to get home and cuddle with his saucy mama. So if he can't be persuaded, it's because he actually has someplace else to be. And where else would he insist on being, if not in the custom-tailored pants of our Eileen Martineau?"

The other two smirk and hide their excitement behind the rims of their coffee mugs. Sleuthing, as silly and schoolgirlish as it is, is nevertheless amusing—even therapeutic. Though none say it aloud, the idea of Reid getting his groove on is… comforting, somehow. Perhaps even endearing. Naïve little Reid with his endless arsenal of statistics, naïve little Reid crawling up over some ridiculously hot chick with some serious mojo. They don't say it aloud—and if they did, they would blush to their toes and drop the investigation without a backward glance—but the unspoken hope that Reid _is_ actually with this woman keeps their enthusiasm alive. And if he's not? It is a distinct possibility that Reid was merely distracted at the dinner party. As atypical as it is for him to be so aloof and confident, Emily has to accept the possibility that he simply hadn't noticed Eileen's remarkable figure.

Hence, this game. There's something about spying on Reid from behind a computer monitor that appeals to them all, even if he's not doing anything out of the ordinary. She can barely call it profiling; it feels a lot more like spying.

Garcia waits until the last possible moment to spring the bar trip on Reid (which happens to be as he's heading out the door). As usual, he at first claims to have other plans. Garcia gives him her best puppy eyes and asks again, poised for a protest party, and then—

"All right, I guess I can go."

They watch him the whole night, like soldiers inspecting the enemy, except for the part where any answers will merely serve their own curiosities. Taking small sips from her beer, Emily keeps a sharp eye on him at all times.

Reid, for his part, is Reid. He orders just one drink, talks too much about a plethora of topics in which he is well-versed (basically any subject he has cared to even think about), and does _not_ take out his phone to send his lover a text message regarding his sudden change in whereabouts. Not a single time.

xxx

It is JJ who finally comes out and asks him if he's seeing anybody. Of course, when she does, she does it in that slick JJ fashion that the others could not have achieved without causing suspicion. Reid has always confided in her the most anyway, Emily concedes. It's really better that she be the one to delve into his more personal matters.

For starters, JJ doesn't plan her assault. One day about two weeks since the dinner where Emily tried to introduce Reid and Eileen, JJ offers to grab sandwiches for the team. There's a little deli just down the street that they all visit on a regular basis. JJ takes down the orders, and passes Reid's desk on her way toward the elevator.

"Hey Spence, wanna join me? I could use some help carrying lunch."

Reid consents. The pair grabs their coats and heads out the door, JJ shooting Emily a covert wink over her shoulder as they pass by. Inwardly, Emily smiles and gives herself a reassuring pat on the back. Nothing like a leisurely stroll to spark some intimate conversation…!

Unfortunately, JJ shakes her head when she finally returns.

"I asked him if he was seeing anybody, and he said he wasn't," she sighs, pressing a wrapped BLT into Emily's hands. "He didn't seem suspicious that we've been watching him for the last few days, but he said he wasn't really in the position to be dating anybody. And I can't say I blame him! With all the traveling we do, I barely have time to see Henry, never mind work on my _relationship_."

Emily frowns as she accepts the sandwich. "Well, if he _said_ it, then I guess…"

"I think it's time we let it go. In hindsight, I _do_ feel a little bad for snooping around."

"I think you're right, Jayge," says Emily. The two women shoot a glance over to where Reid is refueling on his sixth cup of coffee while simultaneously reading the New York Times from cover to cover. "Maybe this time, a handshake is just a handshake."

From that point on, they drop the subject entirely, immersing themselves into the case that follows a few days later. Other than the one fluke, none of the three sense any real change in Dr. Reid. For the most part, he remains the same as ever, and they cover up their initial disappointment with the idea that Reid, at least, will always have his books as company.

xxx

Spencer stands before the sink in his bathroom, clad in a fresh pair of boxer shorts and breathing in the moisture-air one easy breath at a time. He clears the shower-borne fog away from the mirror with one hand, shakes up his contact lens case, and pushes his damp hair out of his eyes. After popping in one contact, and then the other, he blinks at his reflection a few times to clear away the excess solution.

"People at work have been behaving very strange," he says. "I think Emily Prentiss may have thought a little too far into my reaction at the dinner party, though I have to admit that it wasn't my best effort at neutrality."

Now he pads, barefoot, across the tiled floor and into the doorway to the bedroom.

"What do you think?"

Eileen Martineau looks up from her copy of the US Chess Federation Magazine and smirks. Her hair, too, is wet and loose from a recent shower. She has yet to change out of her bathrobe, and has retired to the recliner with a magazine since last Spencer saw her.

"Are you asking me how I feel about your friends," she begins, "or about you standing there in your underpants?"

Blushing despite his best efforts, Spencer makes a quiet beeline for the freshly-ironed slacks waiting for him on the bed.

"I was actually talking about our situation in general," he says, smiling down at the carpet, his hands yanking the khakis up over his legs. "This has been going on for a while now, and I'm just concerned that we may be crossing the professional boundaries."

Eileen rolls her eyes and turns a page in the magazine, the simper never leaving her face even as she scans her reading material. "Well, technically I could be considered your superior, though we're not exactly dating. Unless you consider 'fuck buddies' a subdivision of a committed relationship."

Spencer, having donned a collared shirt, begins to wrestle himself into a sweater vest.

"Not exactly, no. You're certainly free to see anyone you want."

"And so are you. So unless you want to openly admit to your coworkers that you're having casual familiar relations with the head of the white collar crime division…?"

Spencer pauses in adjusting his wristwatch and tries to picture himself in such a situation. He tried to imagine how he could willingly sit down before the desk of S.S.A. Aaron Hotchner and explain that he had met Eileen three months ago at a convention and had been screwing her ever since… the idea alone makes him shudder.

He looks up, watch still in hand, and meets Eileen's eyes from across the room.

And they both laugh.

x

_Fin._


	2. Therapy

**Title:** Therapy  
**Author:** Invaderk  
**Rating:** T, edging on M if you're into reading between the lines.  
**Pairings/Characters:** Reid  
**Warnings:** Mentions of extreme violence and drug abuse. Non-sexual nudity (if that counts). Bizarreness.  
**Disclaimer:** I own nothing, make no profit, and get nothing but sheer joy from writing this piece.  
**Summary:** If violence is linked to Spencer's chemical need for substance, then he will rid himself of violence as best as he can.  
**Author's Notes:** Many thanks to **pabzi** for being an amazing beta! 3

Happy Reading!

* * *

_Therapy_

The moment Spencer Reid arrives back home from a case, he falls into step with a meticulous routine. It doesn't matter the time of day, or how long it has been since he last left his house. If he has come in contact with some horrific montage of broken bodies and damaged psyches, he plays it out to the last motion.

In the United States, there are approximately forty-six murders a day.

They wrapped up another case just a few hours ago, with minimal damage for all parties. By the end, the team had saved three girls and lost only two—a victory, by numerical standards. And in the three days that it took them to save these three people, approximately a hundred thirty-eight others died by the hand of someone else; roughly one death per half hour.

The house is always dark and silent when Spencer passes over the threshold. He's standing there with his go-bag draped over one shoulder, almost leaning on the doorknob with his full weight. The flight back to Quantico was largely uneventful. He'd read several passages of _The Faerie Queene_ to keep awake, and when that failed to help, he'd played a few rounds of cards with Hotch and JJ. The others had seemed comforted to be done with it for the weekend, but the tense feeling in his shoulders had remained long after the jet touched down in Virginia.

It remains even now, as he stands with his hand on the doorknob and an ache in his chest. Relief doesn't come until the routine is done, and he has yet to start.

Spencer can feel his legs quivering with anticipation as he shuffles further into the house and eases the door shut behind him. He drops his bags to the floor, all at once, and steps out of his shoes without even considering the light switch behind him. Then he makes a beeline for the other end of the house, first pausing by the kitchen table to set his phone and wallet aside.

In this country alone, a violent crime occurs every twenty-two point eight seconds. Statistics can be comforting to Spencer, who likes to believe that the world is largely harmless on the whole, that the nine-to-five man can almost always go without fear of being assaulted during his daily routine. But statistics can wound just as well as they can heal.

Before he reaches the bathroom, Spencer has loosened his tie and pulled it over his head. It lies flat, draped across his shoulder, the buttons on his sleeve cuffs undone and batting his wrists as he moves for the ones down his front. From the neck down, he undoes each one without looking at his hands. If he takes his eyes from the bathroom door, he knows that he might never reach it.

He steps into the white-walled room and closes the door before flicking on the lights. His shirt now hanging open, he pauses from the unbuttoning process to unknot his tie and toss it into the sink. He tries not to think of the smiling patterns beneath his fingers as he smooths out the fabric, or of where it may have dragged when he leaned over a rotting corpse beneath a noisy railroad bridge. If the tie is splotched with red, he throws it away regardless of his connection to it—perhaps it was a gift, or purchased in some exotic store in any given part of the country. Once the bathroom door has been closed behind him, the connections to his past do not matter until after the procedure is done. If the tie has not been abandoned to the trash, he fills the sink with hot water and a teaspoon of powdered detergent that he keeps in a cupboard beneath counter.

Throughout the process, Spencer keeps his mind methodically blank. He focuses on the feel of woven fabric beneath his fingers, trying to count the threads and differentiate among the textures. There is something about these quiet motions that keeps him from slipping into an unreachable state, something that could not be attained by conversation or even by sitting down to watch television. He's never experienced anything quite like it.

Well, almost nothing. He feels his mouth twitch as the taboo subject crosses into the forefront of his mind, shakes his head to keep the thought from growing into a monstrosity. Still, the facts remain.

Statistically, as many as 54% of those recovering from addiction experience a relapse at some point. Among the most common deal-breakers are obsessive thinking about drug usage, feelings of being overwhelmed, unrealistic goals for healing, trauma, avoidance behaviors, and ignoring the warning signs of relapse. Denial, essentially. It's the feeling he gets as he unfastens his wristwatch and tosses it into the sink with his tie. His belt follows suit a moment later.

Spencer keeps his bathroom hamper lined with a white garbage bag, because otherwise he might contaminate the rest of the house with his filth. To this he adds his shirt and undershirt.

With indissoluble care, he unbuttons the front of his trousers slowly, one loop at a time, relishing in the feel of the warm little disks against his fingers. The pants fall down his long legs to pool around his ankles, and he steps out of them before tossing them into the hamper with his shirts. Then he peels the mismatched socks away from his feet, pitches both these and his boxer shorts into the hamper. And only once he has tied the plastic bag tight does he cross to the shower, yank open the vinyl curtain, and turn the water on.

He can feel it now, anxiety's gentle thrum across his bare and crawling skin. His feet soak up the cold from the tile, but it does not help to bring him back from the edge. The little practices that used to keep his cravings in line have failed him, just as he has failed the forty-three others who died today as a result of anger, violence and despair. Once guilt is stripped down to its most basic components, there lies obsession, and with that, addiction.

Spencer knows this science, and he feels this pressure most just after a case, once the files have been signed and stowed away into a locked file cabinet. It's that desperate need to cling to something stronger than his own body—that which makes him feel that he, too, can be an unaffected nine-to-five man.

When one smokes, cooks bacon, or enters a coffee shop, the scent of these activities clings to clothing and hair. Studies have shown that no matter where the toothbrush is kept in the house, it will still pick up particles of things that most would rather not have in their mouths. Spencer thereby concludes that the same logic applies to crime scenes. So here he stands.

Alcohol or drug use by a perpetrator is behind approximately 30 to 50 percent of violent crime. Those who have experienced the grotesqueries of violence are significantly more prone to its re-creation. In all of his experience, Spencer has come to understand that the remains of brutality, like smoke on a jacket, keep hanging on long after the victims have been stowed away to rest. If violence is linked to his chemical need for substance, then he will rid himself of violence as best as he can.

This is Spencer on the brink of relapse. He is Panic if Panic can be stripped naked and shivering with the force of maintaining its deteriorating willpower.

He steps over the lip of the tub and into the stream, where the water is as hot as a branding iron and his entire body tenses with the pain it brings.

After any gruesome case, Spencer goes straight for the shower to wash away the specks of blood, the tiny droplets of sweat that accumulate on his palms and back when he runs his hands over a case file. Having an eidetic memory is a mixed blessing in many ways—with it he saves lives, facilitates his team in a way that no other could manage. Ingenuity also means that he continues to witness crimes even once they've reached their end. He sees death in the daytime, when he's sitting on the jet and holding his breath so that he doesn't breathe in the invisible spatterings of gore on his shirt. He washes his hands as frequently as he can. It helps, but the fix is only temporary. Until he has dug his nails into his hair in a lather, rinse, repeat version of casework therapy, he cannot breathe.

Spencer does this now, tilting his head back against the scalding stream to melt away the day's terror. He squeezes too much shampoo into his palm and scrubs it all into his hair anyway. He scratches from front hairline to nape, digs his knuckles into the roots and runs his fingers through, and through, as if trying to peel his scalp away. Shower steam fills his breaths with vapor, and he worries that the heat might cause him to faint. The water has all but cooked him; his chest and stomach have flushed lobster red. And still, he moves on to soaping up the rest of his body, soaking it in and washing it away. The suds that run down his neck and chest, down his legs to pool around his feet, take with them the screams of women and mutilated children. Burning families. Scarred fathers. He rubs at his face and arms until satisfied that he no longer carries the evidence of violent crime's victims.

Today, he and Hotch had pulled a teenage girl from her assailant's closet. He can see her ever-clear in his mind—the deep gashes on her face and neck from where the UnSub had tortured her, the raw lines around her wrists. The moment Spencer had cut her free from the coat rack, she'd latched on to him as if he were her own father. He feels her weight threaten to drag him to his knees as it had in that bedroom. Spencer scrubs viciously at his neck, where her fallen tears have dripped and dried. He flexes his fingers on the bar of soap until he can no longer feel her hair between his fingers, from when he had cradled her head while she buried her face in his shoulder and sobbed, and sobbed.

When he has scoured his skin raw and rinsed every bit of soap away from his body, he steps back so that the last of the soap will run down the drain. He is Panic if Panic, like a snake, can peel its skin away to emerge anew.

Spencer feels dizzy and sick, his body and face aching from the unbearable heat and the grinding of nails against flesh. For just a moment he believes that he is done, as if he did not design this two-step program himself. And though it works wonders, he has to admit that he dreads it every time. He turns around in one slow, blank-faced motion, feet splashing on the tile, and reaches out an arm. His hand finds the spigot knob and grasps it, knuckles whitening from his grip, and Spencer takes a deep breath. He turns the handle over, all the way to the opposite end.

There's a moment's pause—just a fleeting fracture of a beat—until the cold hit his face like a brick wall.

The first time he ever did it, he'd panicked, slipped, and almost broken his wrist from its contact with the ground. Even six months later, he cannot help but turn his cheek against the freezing spray. For all his ingenuity, he is but a man. Like the others, he needs to breathe and plow his way through the cold, to wipe his mind clean of the death he encounters on the job. If it means that he has to die first, then he will die clean and sober. It's better than the alternative.

His stomach seizes with the effort of staying still, nails cutting little crescents into the palms of his hands. A pained growl escapes through his gnashed teeth. He's convinced that he is drowning, that he has plunged through the ice and cannot find the hole through which he fell. But even as he begins to quake from holding his breath, he feels the panic begin to drain from his chest. This is what healing feels like, and it hurts like all Hell.

This is Spencer, coming back to life.

His breath escapes him all at once, letting go with a gasp that ricochets off the walls of the shower stall. Panting, he lets his head fall. The freezing water runs over his shoulders and neck and down his back, and he focuses all of his energy on easing the tense muscles in his torso. He waits, patiently, until he can no longer feel it when he bites his lip, and only then does he shut the water down and stand there in the silent fog of his bathroom. His breaths still come in short little huffs. Droplets of water drip from his sopping hair and down his face, clinging to his eyelashes and pooling in his ears.

Spencer dries himself before stepping out of the tub, and dresses thereafter. His reflection looks pathetic, he thinks, catching sight of himself in the mirror as he's stepping into a pair of sweatpants. He bears the marks of his fingernails everywhere that he can see. Long, red criss-crosses across his arms and stomach almost blend in with the rest of his pink-tinged skin. Spencer gives himself a grim nod of approval.

When he wanders out into the kitchen for a cup of tea, limping on his bad knee, a blinking light catches his eye from across the room.

It's his phone, waiting for him where he left it on the table—how long ago was it? He can't say for certain. It's certainly been a _while_. For a moment, he considers not picking it up at all, but curiosity gets wins him over in the end. Slowly, he reaches out and takes the phone from the table.

He has to read the text message twice in order to process what Morgan is asking him.

_hotch said this was a bad one for you_. _you ok kid?_

Spencer blinks, hard. He flexes the long fingers on one hand to find them still stiff with cold. All he can hear is a distant ringing—a dull, numb sound that has since replaced the shrill cries for help. At least for now.

Spencer stares down at the phone in his hand for a few more seconds, then purses his lips and sends back a response.

_I feel fine._

_xxx  
_

_Fin._


	3. Three Times

**Title: **Three Times Reid Struggled with Addiction (And One Time He Didn't)  
**Author:** Invaderk  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Word Count:** ~4,300  
**Characters/Pairings: **Reid-centric, ensemble. No pairings (unless you ship Reid/Hookers)  
**Warnings:** Language, references to drug abuse, and prostitution. Spoilers for _The Big Game/Revelations_.  
**Disclaimer:** I own absolutely nothing.  
**Summary:** The title is pretty self-explanatory, I think!

Happy Reading!

* * *

_Three Times Reid Struggled with Addiction (And One Time He Didn't)_

I.

She's staring at him from across the room, and he hates the feel of her eyes as they move across his face. She's looking him up and down with a sort of reserved skepticism, as if she's trying to figure out how to get him to take his clothes off without him hitting her. But it feels a lot more like she's judging him. He doesn't need her thoughts, not when he is already so disgusted with himself that he could scream. His head has begun to ache, his heart spreading the guilt up and into his brain with every beat. And yet, here he is.

For the moment, Spencer steals his eyes away from the low, low cut of her shirt. She's running her hand along the slender curve of her waist. She's watching him loop his tie around his arm. He can barely stand to look at her fingernails—they're painted a deep shade of violet, beginning to chip where the edges rounds off into finely-shaped points. He hates it because it makes him think of Garcia, whose nails were the exact shade today at work, only Garcia chips her nail polish on purpose and this girl probably doesn't.

_It's all part of the flair, my love_, Garcia said when he saw her cleaning the little purple flakes from her desk. She'd patted the side of his face and laughed when he scooted backwards in his chair, flushing from contact he doesn't deserve. Spencer has always been uncomfortable about touching.

The veins in his arm have risen to the surface of his skin, blue and eager. He pokes them with one finger to decide which will take it best. His companion speaks, finally.

"I've seen you on TV." She uncrosses her legs, grazing her fingers along the length of her inner thigh. "Aint you some kind of a doctor?"

"I am a doctor," he says, but he's holding the syringe between his teeth and his words come out muffled.

"Then you should know better."

Now he jerks his chin up from where he's slouched against the hotel room's peeling wallpaper, propping his arm against one leg, looking at her and not even noting that she hasn't bothered to wear underpants beneath her torn stockings. All he sees is the chipped nail polish. That chipped fucking nail polish—it makes him think that it's Garcia who's sitting on the bed and not some random hooker who's tracing a finger across her painted lips and smiling like she's judging him. Scowling, he looks back down and takes the needle from his mouth.

"I do know better," he mutters. He wants Garcia to leave him to his business, to let him go and let him drown.

He thinks of Garcia's soft hand on his face, thinks of her amusement fading to dismay. They'd been in a hotel room once too, after all. And there had been blood, just like now. Except it had been Nathan's and not his, not a little trickle running down his forearm and a wave of serenity rushing up into his head.

"Doctor," she huffs, shifting her weight forward until she's poised on the edge of the low mattress. "Don't be so selfish."

He blinks. His eyes flicker over to her, with her four-inch heels propping her spread legs up in acute angles. The polish is there, but Garcia is gone. It's good stuff.

Syringe in hand, he forces himself to his feet and takes the three long steps across the room. She's hooked her fingers into the loops of his belt before he even reaches her, jerking him forward until he almost topples over her slender frame. She's tugging his button-down shirt from its neat tuck in his slacks, and she's judging him. She's all legs, and she's far stronger than he is, and he feels her judging him even as she yanks his belt loose and tosses it aside. In his frenzy, he finds that he doesn't mind it much.

She shrugs out of her black sweater so that she can offer up one pale arm. His shoes slip from his feet and thud on the carpeted floor as he kneels up over her hips, forcing her backwards across the bed.

Cherry lips never quite coming together, she says, "Do me next, Doctor."

And he does.

xXx

II.

The following words do not exist in Spencer's repertoire expertise—in alphabetical order:

_Charisma_ _(noun) (__\kə-__ˈ__riz-mə\) _– a special magnetic charm or appeal; or, the ability to talk yourself out of getting your ass pummeled into the ground when an unplanned visitor shows up at your front step at two in the morning and raps her knuckles against the door. One, two, three times.

_Control (noun, often attributive) (__\kən-__ˈ__trōl\)_ - an act or instance of controlling; _also_ **:** power or authority to guide or manage; or: what Spencer does not possess an ounce of at this moment. His legs are speeding off for the door while his upper half, seeming to understand what is happening, tries to hang back by the counter he'd been using as a whiteboard. The result is a strange sort of jerking walk. "Control" implies that he gave two shits _and_ stopped himself from going off the deep end. But he does not have control. And, in fact, he made a point to _leap_ off the deep end. Control would have stopped him from lurching forward, grabbing the door handle, and turning it against his own will.

_Sobriety_ _(__noun)__ (__\sə-__ˈ__brī-ə-tē-\)_ – or, the quality or state of being sober. As in, when Spencer does open the door to find JJ on his front step in her pajamas, fists perched on her hips, he is not immediately sure that she is even standing there. Sobriety would imply that she did not see in his hand a tall glass, with condensation dotting the clear spaces between his fingers. If he had been even a little bit sober, she would not have visibly clenched her jaw to fight back the urge to shout at him.

But Spencer, for the moment, cannot even fully grasp the meaning of these three terms while he stares at JJ with his mouth agape. What he does possess is one single word, mouthed rather than spoken because he seems to have swallowed his tongue at the sight of raised eyebrows and balled fists: "Shit."

"'Shit' is right, Spence." If he had been even a little sober, he would have been able to see the clear lines of worry etched into her frustrated expression. "What is this text supposed to mean, exactly?"

Her phone appears in her hand as if by magic. Spencer's wide eyes move from her face to the glowing screen. In the inbox, under the name "Spencer Reid" is a message that he doesn't quite remember sending:

_Jj you got to come over now i wrote you a powm on my frige_

"Um," says Spencer, at last having found his voice.

"Are you _drunk_?" JJ demands, and pushes past him into the house without waiting for an answer. "Spence, I thought you—oh my God. Oh my God, what _is_ this?"

Spencer takes his time in closing the door, and turns around. He finds JJ standing in the middle of his kitchen with her mouth hanging on its hinges, stuck somewhere in the hazy zone between fascination and repulsion. The small part of him that cares realizes that this situation could get them both into bigger trouble than he'd anticipated, but the worry is far away. Behind a veil, so to speak. What interests him more, as he sips his drink and leans against the door to keep from stumbling sideways, is JJ's reaction to his artwork.

From one wall to the other—the entire length of the tile floor, the smooth metal of the refrigerator and microwave, the _counters_—is his handiwork in black dry erase marker. He'd started with algorithms, digressed to digits of pi, then got bored after the first five hundred and turned to drawing out the molecular models for each of the elements. The back door to the house became oxygen, the sink is einsteinium. In his haze, he'd gotten stuck on the molecular shape of tantalum and had to draw it five times across the floor to get it right. He was fairly satisfied with the end product.

"I wrote you a poem, JJ," he says. The soles of his mismatched soles are stained black with smudged ink. They mop up even more black as he walks across a few equations on his way to the refrigerator. He jabs his finger at a few lines of sloppily-scrawled text. The actual words are indiscernible to both his and her eyes, smudged from his hand dragging across it. "Do you see?"

JJ is caught up between panic and the irrational question of how on earth he plans on cleaning all of this up. She instead approaches the kitchen table, and picks up a pill case that lies amidst stacks of paperwork, a bin of markers, and a bottle of Jack.

She turns to face him, gives the case a little shake so that he can hear its contents bounce off the little plastic walls.

"Is this what I think it is, Spence?"

JJ's legs wobble, her feet slipping on the floor as she walks. She's looking at Reid as if he might strike her despite his apparently cheerful drunkenness, like he might be breaking down at the molecular level. She reaches out a shaking hand and grasps the red fabric of his sweater.

"I thought you were getting help," she says, but all Spencer hears is her stifled sob.

One sound, so indistinct that he may have missed it altogether were he not out of his mind.

The tumbler slips from his hand and shatters around their feet, sending shards of glass and amber across the floor.

xXx

III.

"How's he doing?"

Emily has been silent for so long that when she finally tries to whisper, her throat catches on the dry air. From his spot in the kitchen doorway, Morgan fakes a pursed-lipped smile. His eyebrows rise as he cocks his head to the side.

"Depends on how you look at it, I guess," he says. "Since you went for coffee? About the same. Quieter now."

He crosses into the kitchen to accept a Starbucks cup full of caffeine, and takes a hesitant sip while Emily frowns at him some more. She feels horrible for leaving him here, even for the time it took to drive to the coffee shop and back (all of thirty minutes, what with the traffic lights deciding it would be funny to fuck with her on the worst of worst days). He had always been just a little closer to Reid than she; as a result, he's taking it much harder upon himself. Even if he does consent to taking a break from watch duty, she knows she'll never get him to go home. He'll fall asleep against the straight-backed rungs of the kitchen chair, or on the floor by the bathroom. And come morning time, he will march into work in today's rumpled clothes.

Emily takes a sip of her own drink. It's hot and heavy on the caramel—just how she likes it—but it doesn't help. "Has he stopped… trying to get out?"

She blanches down at her own cup of coffee because she can't bring herself to say 'screaming' with this knot in her throat. Reid's house is still and silent and full of an enormous pressure. It's the opposite of how she'd left it—with Morgan sitting on the floor, his back against the bathroom door to keep Reid contained within the windowless room. The last thing she'd heard upon closing the door had been a desperate and pathetic plea to be let loose. Luckily, the neighbors haven't called the police. Yet.

It's all part of the process; that's the mantra of the day. They'dseen detox before, when it was just another part of their job, but it never seemed like reality until the shouts were laced with a familiar voice. Every time Reid struck his fist against the wooden door, Emily heard a gunshot go off in her mind. Morgan must have heard it too—as she studies him, she sees that his shoulders have that dip, that horrible dip. He winces as if moving forward causes pain, like he just got into a fist fight and barely managed to escape alive.

Instead of answering her question, Morgan reaches into his pocket and re-emerges with a brass doorknob.

Oh.

An hour later, her hands are shaking as she knocks on the bathroom door—softly, and with the backs of her fingers instead of her knuckles. More like a question than a warning. When she receives the expected silence in return, she cracks the door open just enough to slip through, then pushes it shut so that neither of them can escape without Morgan's consent from the outside.

She had expected to find Reid squatting in the corner of the room, maybe with his arms clutching his knees to his chest so he can better glare at her. Instead, she's startled to find him sprawled across the floor on his stomach. His cheek is pressed against the off-white tile, his arms bent above his head as if he'd given up mid-way through crawling to the door. He looks like he's drowning.

"I brought you a pillow," she says lamely, holding the aforementioned object up so that he can see it, even though his eyes are shut tight. "If you want, we can put your mattress in here. It'll be easier if you're comfortable."

Reid does not answer. Emily stands there with her hands at her sides and the corner of the pillow clenched in one fist. She understands. She does. If she didn't, she wouldn't have stayed when she and Morgan found Reid semi-conscious and out of his mind with early withdrawal. She wouldn't have torn the house to pieces to secure his stash before Reid could change his mind. And she most certainly wouldn't have helped Morgan carry Reid's writhing figure to the bathroom once he _did_ change his mind.

Even so, there is a sense of quiet frustration that haunts her with every movement. That they had let him reach this point, had not seen how serious his addiction had become… for her part, she wants to lay down right beside him and scream, too. But as the one staging this intervention, her options are limited. All she can do now is fish him out of the water and help him catch his breath.

Emily drops to her knees beside a motionless Reid, who could be dead aside from the sounds of quick and shallow breathing. When she lefts his head to slip the pillow between his face and the floor, she's so focused on being gentle that she doesn't notice his sweat; it runs onto her hands like water off of freshly-showered skin. The oversized tee shirt clings to his back, detailing the curve of every rib.

Emily shakes her head. And then, once she's decided that they'd both be better off if she left him alone, he stops her train of thought with a hiccup. He'd tensed at her touch as if she'd shocked him. He lifts his head only long enough to turn his face away as the first sob rises up. When it bursts, it shakes him all the way down to the edges of his consciousness and pushes him over. One sob gives into another, until he begins to shake with the force of it and has to bury his face in the pillow so that his tears go unwitnessed.

The sound startles Emily out of her trancelike state, snapping her up like it was the first time she'd ever seen him. Because this addict—_this_ one, with his arms curled around his head to keep the ceiling from crashing down on him—isn't just another victim, or another agent. It's—

"_Reid_."

Emily has options. She could fetch Morgan and have him carry Reid to a more comfortable location, but she's not yet sure that she can trust Reid enough to ease up. She could sit here with her fingers twisted in her lap and her legs bent awkwardly against one another. But Emily, in all of her professional experience, does the first thing that feels right.

Glued down with sweat, the heavy fabric of his tee resists as Emily slides two fingers under the hem, and gives way when she pries it up. Her hand finds the slick small of his back and rests there with her fingers splayed across the hot skin.

He's burning himself out of his body. She runs her fingers up along his back and across his shoulder blades, where she can feel every rib contract with the force of his crying. She knows that touch makes him uncomfortable, that he will shy away from it if given the chance, but today she doesn't care. She is cold in contrast to him, and her icepack hands are the best gift she can offer.

"This is the hard part," she sighs. "I'm sorry you have to go through it, but it gets better after a few days. I'm—I'm sure you already knew that."

She circles the spines of his back with her thumb, digs the hell of her palm into the spots she knows will be the sorest, and irons them out. The deep ridges tell her where he scratched and scratched his skin until it bled, and she fingers each one even though she knows it hurts, because this hurt is better than the others. If nothing else, it's distracting.

Emily keeps talking because she worries that if she lets silence settle upon them, she might begin to cry too. "You might feel out of control right now, but admitting it is the first step to—"

The sentence is left dangling when Reid gives his head an authoritative shake. Emily feels rather than tells her hand stop rubbing his back. Her eyebrows rise. Reid, seeming to want to prove his gesture, takes a deep breath. He continues to shake with the effort of restraint, but the sobs slow to a halt.

"You… _are_ in control, then?" she begins, bordering on skepticism despite her efforts at neutrality. It's difficult to tell what exactly he's thinking when he won't look at her, but she has a hard time believing that he could think as much when he can't even get off the floor.

Instead of responding, Reid sniffles, wipes his eyes with the loose corner of his pillowcase. Emily slides her hand out from under his shirt and rests it at the base of his neck instead.

"Okay," she begins, and then repeats it with some level of confidence. "Okay. Then are you ready to tell me where you hid the rest of your stuff? Because I ripped the house apart, but I _know_ I didn't get it all."

The silence that follows tells Emily just about what she'd expected to hear. She bites the inside of her cheek to quell an exasperated sigh, runs her fingers through the short and damp hairs at the base of his scalp. The gesture is supposed to be reassuring. She _hopes_ it's reassuring.

"That's okay, too. You don't have to admit anything yet if you're not comfortable. If it makes you feel any better, you've officially been sober for—" she glances down at her wristwatch, "Thirteen hours! That's really something, Reid. It's a good start. That's… That's seven-hundred-seventy minutes of you doing something that a lot of people can't even do for one minute."

The room lapses into one of those awful, swollen silences once more, and Emily lets it pass by. She runs her fingers through his hair again and again, because she doesn't care that he hasn't showered in two days and she _really_ doesn't care that it may be more comforting to her than it is to him. This is how she knows he's still here.

"Ceiling tiles."

Emily jumps at the sound of his voice. She not been expecting it, but he sounds just as he should—his voice gravelly, sticky. She's so dumbfounded by the occurrence that she misses the context completely.

"What?"

Another pause, and then Reid coughs and rolls over, arms straining with the effort it takes to move.

His red-rimmed eyes meet hers for the first time. They're so startlingly tired and so startlingly dark that she almost misses his words a second time.

"Did you check the ceiling tiles?" he says, in that hoarse rasp.

Emily blinks. "Well, no. Should I?"

He gives a weary nod. "And… seven-hundred-_eighty_ minutes. That's thirteen."

Reid looks at Emily for what feels like minutes but is really just seconds, and Emily stares back and feels everything and can't think of anything to say. By the time he closes his eyes and sighs, she has begun to tremble.

Emily reaches down to smudge the wet drops from his face. She cups the side of his burning jaw and doesn't leave. The side of her thumb contours perfectly into the sharp dip of his cheekbone.

xXx

(And One Time He Didn't)

"But how did you _know?_"

Rossi, his brow furrowed in his apparent confusion, stares at Spencer as if the younger agent has sprouted another head. Hotch, who had been in the middle of dialing Morgan and Prentiss to let them know about the case's most recent development, freezes with his thumb poised over the "send" button.

"This UnSub had no indication of drug abuse as a motive," Rossi continues, baffled beyond the obvious. "He's a sexual sadist, not a junkie. And you were able to tell that he was hiding heroin in his ceiling panel because of a misplaced _chair_?"

"Well," Spencer says, his eyebrows threatening to rise right off of his face, "everything else was in its place, right? I mean, if he was really in a hurry like we think he was, it just makes logical sense for him to forget the chair and run."

Spencer had assumed that Rossi had read up on the Georgia case, that his superior powers of observation would have lead him to the obvious conclusion sooner rather than later. Spencer had _assumed_, once he hopped down from the UnSub's apartment desk with a box of paraphernalia in hand, that his odd intuitions about drug-induced behavior would always, always reference back to the source.

But… apparently not.

"That's quite the intuition."

"Guess I've been doing this job a little too long," Spencer replies, allowing himself a dark chuckle at Rossi's expense.

Spencer considers the irony of his response in silence. He passes the box off to the nearest forensic scientist. The weight in his hands had been too familiar for him to hang on any longer. Not tempting, or even fear-inducing. Just… familiar.

And as he's rubbing his hands on the sides of his slacks, Hotch catches his eye. The agent, with the phone still waiting patiently in his open palm, dips his chin for a fraction of a second. The smallest of nods, just enough for Spencer to know that their thoughts are the same.

For all the trouble Spencer has caused, Hotch can somehow still trust him. And Hotch had witnessed Spencer at his ugliest. After his third and final relapse, he had been the one to pluck Spencer off the road and go through the process again. Aaron Hotchner, the most critical of them all, had sat with him and watched _Star Trek_ reruns until the fever broke and Spencer was able to function once more.

"Good work, Reid," Hotch says, and then the phone is glued to his ear and he's practically out the door already.

Hotch never forgets. He lets the offender regain his lost trust, he lets the offenses slip into the past, but he never, _ever_ forgets.

Rossi spares him one last look before he, too, heads off to meet the rest of the team at the police station.

Spencer lingers behind.

In the middle of the serial killer's bedroom, Spencer looks down at his hands, flexes his fingers, and spreads them wide.

The others had been there for him in the most secret and intimate ways, never letting their methods run into professional time, yet never failing to arrive at his front step when he needed them most. Sometimes, they had been there without realizing the impact that they had on him. It was possible that they didn't understand exactly what they had done—what they were still doing, even now.

And yet, once he reemerged into the world, he found that little else had changed. A small part of him had hoped that maybe the world would transform as he had transformed, that his experiences and struggles might result in something greater. But killers were still killing, the Team was still profiling, and Hotch was still communicating with almost unnoticeable gestures. Everything the same.

So Spencer looks down at his own hands, just to make sure that _something_ had happened.

He inspects his palms to make sure that they're still as clean as they were this morning, when he got out of bed and marked his calendar with its nine-hundred thirteenth tally.

They are. And, after everything, so remains his conscience.

Spencer presses his lips together to conceal a faint quirk of a smile, and drops his hands to his sides.

xXx

_Fin._


	4. Halloween

**Title:** Halloween

**Author:** Invaderk

**Rating:** PG

**Characters/Pairings:** Reid, Morgan, Emily, JJ, Henry (Reid/Halloween)

**Warnings:** This story may cause you to shit butterflies, in all its plotless fluff. Unbeta'd because I wrote it at the very last second.

**Summary:** Everyone's plans are falling apart, so Reid puts them back together.

**Author's Notes:** Please excuse my title. I had to stick my nose in a giant rotting pumpkin for this story, so… enjoy! And be warned that I wrote it at record speed to get it out in time, so this is not exactly _The Odyssey_. And more importantly, HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Disclaimer: I own nothing and make no profit.

Happy Reading!

* * *

_Halloween_

"What do you think of this one?"

"Ooh, that one's nice! The slutty pirate look really suits you." When Emily swiveled in her seat to shoot JJ a glare, the latter quickly remedied, "I mean, it's better than the slutty astronaut costume. I'll give you that."

Emily buried her face in her hands. "Have I ever mentioned that I _hate_ this holiday?" she said, her voice muffled. "Every year I buy some skanky costume at the last minute and go to the bar and wake up the next morning with a headache. It's not even _fun_."

"So why do you go?"

"I don't know. Just because?"

"If it makes you feel any better, I'll be at home with Henry all night, passing out candy to the highschoolers who still think it's okay to trick-or-treat."

"Honestly, that sounds like more fun."

JJ gave Emily a sympathetic pat on the shoulder and sipped her coffee. Emily blew her bangs out of her eyes with a puff of air, leaning forward on her elbows to better inspect the screen. Her mouth was pinched on one side, a horizontal line that relayed all of the disgust without words.

"Would it be a misrepresentation of the BAU if I went as a slutty FBI agent?" she muttered, and JJ almost choked on her drink.

It was at that moment that Reid, dressed in black from head to toe save for his tie, chose to materialize behind them.

"What's so funny?"

Emily jumped in surprise and hit the monitor on/off button before Reid could get a look at her screen. Wordlessly, JJ reached out to admire his tie, smoothed the orange silk between her finger and thumb. Little jack-o-lanterns smiled up at her.

"Looking good," she said, and he beamed. "Very festive."

"Thanks! Did you know that carved pumpkins were originally displayed to ward off malevolent spirits and serve as a guide to friendly ones? In that way, Celtic Samhain is very similar to el _Día de los Muertos____."_

_"__I did not," she said, nodding once, slowly, as she let his tie flop back against his chest. "But good to know!"_

"What are you doing tonight, Reid?" Emily asked, wheeling around in her chair.

Reid jammed his hands into his pockets and shrugged. "Staying in, probably. On Halloween in particular, I like to cook. Last year I baked pumpkin seeds, two pumpkin pies, and a pumpkin cheesecake!" He paused, looking from JJ to Emily, whose eyebrows had knitted together in a dumbfounded expression. "Why, what are you two doing?"

Before either woman could answer, Morgan rounded the corner with his phone at his ear and a scowl on his face. He hung up when he saw the others crowded around Emily's desk, pocketed the phone, and pulled up next to Reid.

"Brian just canceled on me. _Food poisoning_." He sighed. "You still going out tonight, Prentiss?"

Emily and JJ shared a glance. One nodded, and then the other.

"Actually, we're going to Reid's tonight. At—" she turned to Reid, whose head had tilted so quickly in surprise that he actually winced. "Is seven good?"

Mouth ajar and brows furrowed, Reid nodded. JJ hid her smirk behind the rim of her coffee cup, and Emily didn't hide hers at all.

"Yeah, we're going at seven," said Emily to Morgan. "Wanna join?"

xXx

At six o' clock, Reid stood in the grocery store's farthest corner amidst an explosion of black and orange. One arm lay across his midriff with the opposite elbow balanced precariously atop it. His chin sat in the cup of his palm, the knuckle of one bent finger pressing up against the base of his nose. His eyes narrowed with thought, Reid pursed his lips and "hmm"-ed his perplexion.

They should be _here_, right where the stuffed witch heads ended and the bat-printed cupcake shells began. But nothing.

A man kneeling a few feet away turned his head at the sound.

"What're you looking for?"

Reid jumped, not having noticed another man in the two minutes they'd been alone in the aisle.

"The carving supplies should be right here, but I don't—"

"They're actually down aisle ten," said the man, pointing down the way for emphasis. "By the costumes."

"Well, that's odd. But thank you!"

"No problem." The man straightened up, dusted off the knees of his jeans with one hand, and held up a small paint kit for Reid to see. Non-toxic pastels, by the look of it. "We're still painting our pumpkins this year. My daughters are five and seven, so we should probably wait until next year to start carving. A visit to the ER might dampen the festivities."

Reid leaned against his grocery cart and nodded, almost eagerly. "A year at least. Though technically most children master their basic fine motor skills by seven years old, the guide on carving kits recommends that children not be permitted to do any of the actual cutting until the age of twelve."

"Uh huh." In the inevitably awkward silence that typically followed these sorts of explanations, the man pointed halfheartedly at Reid's cart. "So, how old are yours?"

"What?"

"The… your pumpkins."

Reid furrowed his brows at the man, his gaze following the gesture until it landed in the pit of the cart. There, waiting patiently to be purchased, sat four large pumpkins and a gourd.

"Oh!" A grin spread across Reid's face as the man's assumption clicked in his mind. He chuckled, gave his head a little shake, and waved his hand for emphasis. "Oh, I haven't got any kids."

The man's eyebrows shot straight to his hairline.

xXx

Autumn was Reid's favorite season, and Halloween his favorite holiday.

He could recite Chaucer at length, detail the traffic patterns of highways across the country, speak for hours on the cultural revelations of a small African tribe that nobody else has heard of. Reid could accomplish just about any academic feat, and at the speed he could think them up. But even so, he still felt happiest when up to his elbow in pumpkin guts. He ran his fingers against the inner wall of the pumpkin, again and again until the long threads of orange welled up beneath his fingernails. He gathered the insides up by the fistful, yanking them triumphantly from within and grinning when the others winced at the sound.

The radio filled the kitchen with _Danse Macabre_, rising up until the song swelled and drifted into a violin solo, dipping off with light pizzicato. Red wine rippled in four glasses.

Reid dropped another fistful into a bowl. Then JJ took over, squeezing the seeds into another bowl before dropping the leftover innards into the trash bin. Beside her, little Henry was happily scribbling away on a Halloween coloring page (and Reid's table, but neither minded this fact). Off to JJ's other side, Emily had a hollowed pumpkin propped up between her knee and the edge of the table. Her knife made quick work of the pattern she'd drawn in black sharpie, until the cut wedges fell back and all that remained was a gnarly-toothed smile. Pleased with her work, she stuck a finger in one triangle eye to clear out the rest of the gunk, then held it at arm's length.

"I am an _artist!_" she proclaimed with a flourish.

"Garcia would be proud," JJ agreed. "If she and Kevin weren't at that Halloween Buffy convention, she'd show you a thing or two about pumpkin carving."

From where he sat, pouring over one of Reid's worn cookbooks, Morgan chuckled and shook his head. He scanned a page, flipped it, scanned another. After a few minutes, he prodded one of the recipes with his finger.

"Pumpkin muffins," he said, more at Reid than anybody else. "I can beat you with _that_."

Reid laughed through his nose. "Yeah, I don't think so. I've already beat you with pie _and_ pumpkin seeds."

"Oh come on. You haven't got any more little tricks up those sleeves of yours?"

Reid paused, his arm bent in mid-scrape. "Pumpkin cheesecake," he said.

"Pumpkin cheesecake?"

"My cheesecake versus your muffins," Reid agreed.

"You're on, kid."

Morgan rose from the table to gather ingredients while Reid hastily finished emptying the last pumpkin. Thus far into the night, Reid's concoctions had won the blind test two for two. Both times Morgan had insisted that the other agent had the unfair advantage of not needing to run back and forth to a cook book, but his argument was soundly quashed each time.

"Morgan, I have a PhD in chemistry!" Reid had boasted while Emily fawned over his pie and vanilla ice cream combination. "I'm working with edible chemicals and you're in _my_ lab. Even Henry agrees, right Henry?"

The orange smeared all around the toddler's mouth served as an answer. Nevertheless, Morgan refused to be beaten so soundly. He cracked his knuckles, shrugged his shoulders as if warming up for a race, and gave the cookbook one last look-over before stepping out of his shoes. Reid followed suit, padding across the floor in his mismatched socks—one decorated with bats and the other with ghosts—as he raced for the refrigerator.

Grinning, JJ wiped her hands on a paper towel and sat back in her seat.

"Wow, she shoes are coming off. This is one serious competition."

"I _know_. It's getting so domestic in here," Emily agreed, fanning herself for good measure. "It's kind of hot, actually."

The women laughed, and it was the sort of deep belly laugh that they almost never got to experience. The job could dig itself down into their very skin, sapping the humor out of even the best situations.

But tonight? Reid and Morgan were weaving back and forth from the oven to the counter to the table, bumping into each other as their paths collided, Reid clearly winning the race and losing the trash talk competition. When the doorbell rang, Emily actually had to pause to wipe her eyes before rising from the table. And to think, she'd planned on going to the bar. Not even Morgan looked like he'd rather be elsewhere.

Once she'd regained control of herself, the laughter settling down to the occasional stomach spasm, Emily snatched up a bowl of King Size candy bars and headed for the door. A symphony of "Trick or Treat!" reached her ears before she had the chance to look around. She grinned down over the heads of Buzz Lightyear, Iron Man, and Cinderella, whose pillow cases hung expectantly from their extended arms. Emily asked the kids what they were supposed to be, and "ooh"-ed and "wow"-ed and the answers.

One of the parents, a middle-aged father with his jacket zipped up almost to his ears—it _was_ chilly, considering that last week had been in the seventies and darkness had long since swallowed up the neighborhood—gave her a funny look.

"Are you a friend of Spencer?" he asked, clearly puzzled by her presence in the doorway.

The question threw her off, so much that she stared dumbly back for a split second longer than necessary. Given the nature of the BAU family's relationship, the answer took a bit of thinking. "Uhm, yes, I'm—well, we work together. And we're also friends. Three of us just came over for the holiday."

"Huh! I didn't know he _had_ any friends."

"Yeah, it's kind of—difficult—to explain," she answered, holding the bowl out to the kids so that they could each take something (they all cheered at the sight of giant candy bars and took two apiece). "But 'friends' pretty much does it. He's in the kitchen right now—"

As if on cue, there was a loud _thump_ and Reid's strangled shout echoed out from down the hall.

"Well, it sounds like a good time. It's good to see people over here for once. I don't think he's ever had a visitor before." Reid's neighbor turned to the kids to speak, and then nodded to Emily. "All right guys, let's move! You have a good night, now."

"Yeah, you too." Emily watched them leave, leaning alongside the frame with her foot propped against the screen door. When the kids disappeared across the lawn, father in tow, she set the candy aside and retreated back into the house.

In the kitchen, she found Reid sitting up on the floor with a mixing bowl overturned on his lap. JJ was crouching next to him, scrambling to clean up the mess while Henry shrieked with giggles and Morgan plowed on with his recipe.

Reid looked up at Emily. He rubbed the back of his head, then flung one arm out at Morgan.

"He pushed me!" he exclaimed. Morgan didn't seem to notice.

"Guess you need to step up your game, Reid," she answered, her hands finding her hips. She gestured toward the bowl as JJ turned it right-side up. "Is is salvageable?"

JJ looked down into the bowl, as if trying to decide whether there was more of the mixture inside it or on Reid's pants. When she looked up, she couldn't suppress a smirk.

"I guess we're having this one _a-la-crotch_."

xXx

When Emily woke up on the morning of November first, she had that momentary panic one experiences when awakening in an unfamiliar place. Her joints ached from the lumpy couch springs and her clingy jeans. She sat up, digging the sleep out of the corner of her eye with one finger. For a fleeting second, she expected to find that she was simply on the couch in her flat, that she had ended up going to the bar after all and had imagined the rest. What she saw instead felt much, much more gratifying.

Morgan was sprawled across the second couch with a blanket draped over his face, vertical shafts of morning light falling across his chest. He and Reid, midway through a sugar crash, had dragged the king size mattress from Reid's bedroom out and into the living room. It sat on the floor in the space between the two couches, with JJ on one side and Reid on the other—Reid lay on his stomach, as far to the edge as he could get without falling off onto the hard wood floor, clearly putting as much distance as he could between he and JJ. And between them was Henry, curled up against his momma. One thumb was in his mouth, and the fingers of his free hand were curled tightly around her shirt.

Emily squinted at the clock on the wall—it was analog, of course, and without numbers so that she had to feel like a fool when she counted the dashes along its face.

Christ, it was almost eleven.

She sat back against the cushions and heaved a quiet sigh. The smell of too many desserts still hung in the air. If she ever had another bite of pumpkin anything, she might vomit. There was an enormous pile of dishes in the sink, a ton of things on her "only day off list", but she didn't get up to leave. Not yet.

Emily lay back down and shifted until she was wedged comfortably into the cracks of the couch. She tugged an ugly plaid blanket over her shoulders, wiggled around a little more for good measure until she was settled, and sighed again.

She thought of what Reid's neighbor had said, thought of all the Halloweens she spent scantily clothed and inebriated beyond her comfort zone. She let her eyes wander across the room, thinking that it was strange that she should feel so at home.

Emily smiled, and closed her eyes, and slept.

xXx

_Fin._


	5. Take Notice

Title: Take Notice

Characters/Pairings: Gen - Reid, Garcia (no shipping, just family love!)

Summary: Sometimes the cases ring a little too familiar.

Warnings: Spoilers for "Middle Man", "100", and "The Big Game/Revelations"

* * *

_Take Notice_

Penelope used to tell JJ that she was insane to take on the liaison role. Penelope couldn't imagine filling it, not when the Bat Cave was so accommodating. It wasn't so much because of the cameras and the douchebaggy media types—she could handle both, and with some level of grace—but the thought of selecting cases made her lunch try to creep back up her throat. Aside from the obvious aspect, that she was choosing who was most likely to die (and could choose wrong at any time), she feared most what the right choice could bring. What she was getting the entire team into when she picked a case.

Now she _was_ JJ, to some extent, as much as she hoped that the flashy colors said she wasn't trying to replace her. She was doing the job as best as she knew how. But the fear was there nevertheless. One misjudgment and she could be putting her family into the scope of a new Tobias Hankel, or even another Reaper (_God forbid, oh God forbid_). It's impossible to say—and JJ had told her as much, on so many occasions, usually after one turns out bad. JJ's mantra has been the same since day one: you've just got to trust your gut and your training experience and hope that your babies come back home unscathed.

Still, sometimes the cases ring a little too familiar to Penelope. And if they're familiar and uncomfortable to she who hath an office far away from the crime scenes, she knows they must be familiar for the team, too. So she does what she can to make them feel like they have her. That they're not alone.

Today she's sending the Team into east bumfuck, aka Indiana. As she looks over the bodies of the women, their arms and legs strewn over the course ground, she doesn't make the connection until long after the prickles have traveled down the back of her neck. She does a double-take at the scene photos while she's transferring files over to the shiny new tablets, pauses for just a moment with her eyes glued to the screen, and then reaches for her feather-tipped pen.

Reid sees the new technology tucked into Garcia's arms and pouts. But she is just as intuitive as she is brilliant, and he feels himself smiling as she hands over a manila folder.

He accepts the case file, runs a thumb along the crease while the others examine their pretty instruments and Hotch questions Garcia's funding methods. Once he's taken a moment to relish the sensation of cool paper in his hands, he slides a finger into the slip and opens it. The pictures jump out at him as they had for Garcia. And unlike Garcia, he makes the connection and then forces it out of his mind. It's not okay to be distracted by these sorts of things—it's been years and the thought still crosses his mind. It can make him all but crazy. Reid shakes his head and follows the others' conversation as it unfolds.

Reid finds the note just a minute later, stuck between two pages—a transcript of the police report and a diagnosis from the morgue. It's bright pink, throwing him off until he recalls that it's Garcia who assembled the files. Casting a furtive glance around, Reid holds the folder just a little bit closer so that nobody else can read the words intended for him alone. He lets his eyes roam slowly over the cursive. He takes it in once, and then again, and by the third time he knows that his face has flushed with color. He bites his lip to keep it from twisting into a smirk.

Eight words, scribbled in purple pen and signed with "XOXO" inside a heart at the bottom. When the others, Garcia included, have left the room, Reid peels the note away from its home in the folder and slips it into his breast pocket.

_Stay out of the corn fields, my love! XOXO_

xxx

_Fin._


	6. GrownUps

**Title:** Grown-Ups

**Characters/Pairings:** Reid, JJ, Emily, 2 would-be OC's (no shipping, just family love!)

**Summary**: Reid confronts his high school bullies... kind of.

**Warnings:** Foul language, implications of drunkenness, implications of violence/bullying, spoilers for "Elephant's Memory" and "Somebody's Watching".

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing, and make no profit.

Happy Reading!

* * *

_Grown-Ups_

Reid's gut was one tight knot, comparable only to the panicked lump in his throat. When he was twelve, his English teacher told him that he would never get into college unless he could learn basic presentational skills. He had always been a disaster of a public speaker, and even worse at hiding his disdain for it. In high school, his face would turn to an embarrassing shade of scarlet, his eyes fighting tears behind his thick-rimmed glasses.

He had learned much since those days. He laughed at his teacher's supposition when the acceptance letters from Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT, and CalTech arrived in the mail on the same day. In the following years, he'd leaned over dead rotting bodies, broken the news to hysterical mothers and fathers, failed at making the audience laugh during a lecture on Victimology (Star Trek jokes never, _ever_ work, by the way). Reid had done all of this with growing dexterity over the past five years.

But when Chris Watson, the captain of Reid's high school football team, turned around in the local Las Vegas bar and didn't recognize him, Reid lost every word in his vast mental dictionary, every ounce of practice. His thoughts flew to Harper Hillman in the library, to the field house, to screaming his throat dry for hours.

This was not the interview he had wanted. When Hotch had sent him to question Chris and Alexa Watson, he'd been so dumbfounded that he couldn't think up an excuse not to go. Morgan, to his credit, had offered to take his place (claiming that they needed Reid back at the station to make a geographic profile), but Hotch had dismissed the point on the grounds that they needed to cover as many interviews as possible before the night was out. It wasn't Hotch's fault. He hadn't known that he'd almost induced a hemorrhagic stroke in his youngest agent.

"Can I _help_ you?" Watson said over the brim of his beer, on the borderline of slurring, eyebrows contracted in genuine confusion.

Parker Dunley had been wrong. Reid did not look like he did when he was twelve, did not feel like he had felt when he was twelve. He'd since had his ribs kicked in by his supervisor, been abducted at gunpoint, beaten into submission, and overcome substance abuse. Reid had taken a bullet for a stranger, placed himself between a gun and a murdering teenager, and shot a man between the eyes. But somehow, _somehow_, Chris Watson reduced this man of thirty to a gangly, naked twelve-year-old.

"I'm with the—your wife, Alexa, said we could find you here," he began, his mouth cotton-dry and numb. "We're investigating a series of murders in the area, and you know all of the victims, so I need to ask you some questions."

The other man stared, dumbfounded. "Who are you, exactly?"

Reid blinked once, swallowed back the threatening taste of bile, and withdrew his FBI badge from his pocket. "I'm, uh, with the FBI. Spencer Reid. We—we went to high school together."

Watson leaned in over his beer to peer at Reid's license, as if he needed to verify the spoken explanation words. A moment stretched out between them, where Reid watched Watson's eyes squint and then widen with shock. Watson looked up after what felt like ten minutes. His mouth was ajar.

"Spencer Reid?" he repeated. When Reid pinched his mouth into a line and raised his eyebrows in affirmation, a dumbfounded grin spread across the other's mouth. "Spencer fucking Reid, are you fucking kidding me? Hey, Jordan—!"

Watson reached a hand back and pulled another man over as if he'd pinched him from thin air. Jordan Thompson, Chris Watson's best friend and the star quarterback of their high school football team, had only grown broader and more muscular since last Reid saw him. Where Watson stood about a head shorter than the agent, Thompson loomed a head taller. And he, unlike Watson, took one look at the badge in Reid's hand (it was frozen there without Reid's permission; he couldn't move his arm) and burst into laughter.

"Oh my God!" he exclaimed, throwing an arm over Watson's shoulders as if the latter could keep him from toppling over with surprise. "Holy shit, it's Spencer Reid. What're you doing here, man? I thought you went back to Mars or something!"

This was not the reunion that Reid had imagined. In his fantasy, Reid was confident, cool and collected and not in a bar (of all places). Bars made him uncomfortable to begin with, the close proximity of everyone else in the room making him feel borderline claustrophobic, and the addition of his two worst high school nightmares only added to his sense of an impending panic attack.

"I'm with the FBI," he said, then winced because he'd said that already, and because he probably should have said it first. "With the Behavior Analysis Unit. There's been a series of murders in our district, and almost all of the victims have been members of the football team between the graduating classes of 1991 and 1993. Since you, Chris, were the captain during our senior year, I have to ask you some questions—"

"_Shit_, man." Watson interrupted him as if he hadn't heard a word about murderers. He took another drink and shook his head, laughing alongside Thompson. "Reiding Rainbow's a cop, Jordan. You fuckin' believe this?"

"He was like four feet tall in high school," Thompson snorted. Then he turned to Reid. "That gun got rubber bullets in it, Reid? That's—that's priceless, man. I don't even know what to say to you. Except that you're about as skinny as a toothpick. That's all I got."

Reid, in an effort to direct the conversation into a direction that didn't leave him helpless, pocketed his badge and braced a hand against the bar table. "Listen, this is really important, so if you could just—"

"Hey—hey Jordan, remember his science project in the twelfth grade? It was like a real live rocket ship or some shit."

"You're right. Damn, you must have made that in like three months, man."

"Nah, more like three days," said Jordan.

Reid had opened his mouth to try interjecting again when someone touched his upper arm. Startled, he looked down to see that he was no longer alone with the other men.

"What's going on, Spence?" JJ asked, and he was surprised at the smoothness of her voice. She leaned up against him, one hand resting on the inside of his elbow, settling into place as if her curves were a perfect fit against his skinny frame.

Emily appeared next, slipping an arm around his waist before he could speak. "Catching up with some friends, Spencer?" she asked lightly.

Both Chris and Thompson stopped speaking at once, their grins dropping off into thunderstruck stares. And Reid could understand why. His eyes darted once to JJ and once to Emily, noting that both women had tousled their hair before approaching. Emily had unzipped her jacket so that the low, low cut of her red shirt was clearly visible.

It took Reid another second to compose himself—a task made more difficult when JJ smoothed her hand across his chest. She could probably feel his heart racing, trying to break out of his chest. He found that he was so overwhelmed by the appearance of his coworkers that the original sense of panic began to subside.

"Chris Watson, ma'am," said Watson to JJ, extending the hand that did not hold a pint of beer.

"I know who you are," she answered, and though she was smiling there was nothing but venom in her voice.

"Hotch just called, Spencer," said Emily. "They've got a lead. We need to leave, pronto."

"Come on." JJ gave him a slight tug in the direction of the door, turned her chin up to meet his eyes. "Let's get out of here."

Reid tore his gaze from JJ's parted lips, did his best to ignore Emily as she ran her fingers up along his side, and turned to the men who had made his childhood a living Hell. Thompson had paled significantly, his eyes fixed shamelessly below Emily's neck. Watson had let his hand fall enough so that the beer was leaking from the top of his mug. Reid felt his own shoulders relax, the weight of both women pressing in on either side, warm.

Reid raised his eyebrows, offered them a smile. "I guess we're done here, then. Have a good night, guys."

Watson looked as if Reid had doused him in ice water, and though he seemed to have a lot on his mind, all he could manage to say to Reid's retreating back was, "_Fuck_, man."

As they took their leave, Emily glanced over her shoulder and blew the men a mocking kiss. Less sympathetic, JJ raised her hand behind Reid's back and flipped them the middle finger.

"Douchebags," Emily muttered in an undertone once they hit fresh, night air. They started off for the parking lot, the women's arms still around Reid's waist as they walked.

"I know, right?" JJ agreed. "You've got some sketchy friends, Spence. Hotch doesn't seem to think they were involved, but still. A couple of jerks."

He let out the breath that he hadn't realized he'd been holding. It was a loud sound, a rush of air that the others most likely took as relief. It was relief, to a degree. But it was also much more. They had no idea what they had just done for him, had no idea what it meant to the kid who had skipped prom to build a model spaceship for the science fair. But they had done it.

"I know it goes against societal standards and FBI guidelines," said Reid, letting his arms fall around their shoulders, "but I think I might be in love with both of you."

xxx

_Fin._


	7. Temperance

WARNING: THIS STORY CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE EPISODE TITLED "LAUREN". IF YOU FEAR SPOILERS, TURN BACK NOW!

A/n: I wrote most of this the night "Lauren" premiered. It's unbeta'd and unrefined, but I hope the message gets through.

Disclaimer: I own nothing and make no profit.

Happy Reading!

* * *

_Temperance_

Spencer doesn't say it at the funeral, and he doesn't say it at the collation that follows, and he doesn't say it once the last of the guests have shuffled out JJ's front door. He contemplates it as he and JJ stare at one another from across the paper plate-littered coffee table, she with her fingers at her temple and he with his stiff leg propped against the couch cushions. Henry, tired from hours of toddling around strangers, has fallen asleep on Spencer's lap. A line of drool ebbs from Henry's open mouth and soaks a dark circle into Spencer's shirt.

Spencer's two fingers of scotch simmer on the closest coaster, untouched. He hadn't felt much like drinking tonight—his belly is too full, too empty, sloshing against itself. He doesn't say it as he and JJ survey one another in the silent dimness, when they and Henry are the last souls in the room and he can feel the finality beginning to seep into his skin like the would-have-been scotch on the coffee table.

Henry's weight is soft and warm, and Spencer cradles his godson's head into his shoulder. He could say it now, with the rush of entertaining funeral guests beginning to wane, with the sound of Will scrubbing lasagna pans in the kitchen, with JJ's eyes on him and the rise and fall of Henry's sleeping chest breathing a slow tempo.

Instead he says, quiet enough to fall short of Will's ears, "She isn't dead."

JJ just looks back at him, her expression unchanged in its blank exhaustion. "Why would you think that?"

"You held me back. If she had really died on the table, you would never have kept me from seeing her."

His tears, then, were those of relief. They were also of deep sorrow, and the spoiled selfishness that knows he will never see her again, but relief. He doesn't say it now, but knowing that he still has the chance keeps his resolve from wavering.

The silence drags like he's stretched the string as far as it can travel from the fingerboard, like JJ is shrinking back in her chair because he might let it snap back into place. "You don't have to answer."

JJ doesn't.

xXx

xXx

He doesn't say it when he's thirty-one and a year is gone since she left him without a last word. Spencer has had time to consider the things he wouldn't have had the courage to say anyway—to thank her for being alongside him during his life's most hellish moments. In the church with Benjamin Cyrus's gun trained between his eyes, when Prentiss had found her words as his had failed him. In the alley outside the soup kitchen, when he had ignored her concern but felt it deeply, felt her tugging him down from mid-air. On silent jet rides, when everyone else was asleep and it was just them together, watching threads of steam twist up from their tea mugs.

Spencer doesn't say it when he's thirty-one, when Hotch tells him that the case is out of their hands now. It's international, he explains, as if Spencer doesn't know. Try as they did to take this personal case all the way to its end, there will always be another victim. Immediate danger on domestic soil. _Priorities_. They drop her case and come back to find it a little colder each time.

"JJ tried to push it in our direction, but her department has more resources. If anyone's going to find Ian Doyle, it's the international investigators." Hotch shakes his head, grips the chair back. "I hate it too, Reid. I'm sorry."

He could say it now, when it's just him and Hotch standing on opposite ends of the conference table, his lips drawn into a thin line. Instead he clears his throat to swallow back his Adam's apple. Spencer says, "I just wish there was something we could do for her." Then, recognizing the look that crosses Hotch's face, he adds, "In her honor."

xXx

xXx

He doesn't say it when he lifts his glass at forty. The family is all here for her birthday—even Rossi, who Seaver had picked up on her way over, had come despite his failing health. The only empty seat at the table has been empty for ten years. Sometimes a new agent pulls a chair up to the table, but even the boldest agents won't go near hers. It gathers dust and they brush it clean. They recall memories as if talking will sharpen the blurring edges.

Spencer never felt it like he does now, with his arm extended toward the center of the table and Morgan's eulogeic speech tumbling over his head. Her empty casket still tugs him down from the shoulder. He's still rolling her rose in his fingers, thumbing the thorn until it cuts into the pad of his finger and bleeds.

Ten years ago, Spencer stayed after hours and packed her desk into a banker's box. In went her appointment book, the tube of cherry lip balm, the polka-dotted mug that Garcia had gifted her for Christmas. He had almost said it then, when he could see the polished surface of her desk for the first time in years. The drawers were empty. He had tucked her star puzzle safely into the bottom of his bag. Knowing that she was alive somewhere did not keep his selfish tears from boiling over.

Ten years. At the home stretch of Morgan's annual toast, Spencer hasn't said it yet.

He could, and has wanted to for so long that when the words rise up into his mouth, they stale and melt into sawdust. But he doesn't. He raises his glass with everyone else, toasts to her name, and drinks.

xXx

xXx

He doesn't say it when he's fifty-four and sliding his gun and badge across the desk.

Once, Spencer tried to explain why he's stayed in the field so long. He could have solved equations for a living and won a Nobel Prize. He could have consulted for NASA. Instead, he all but slept in his Kevlar vest for thirty years. He could have moved up and on, yet chose to linger back with his revolver and the remainder of his team. Some of his reasons are more selfish than others, but none repeat over in his dreams more than her, her voice on the phone, that self-assuring mantra. _Lauren Reynolds_ _is dead_. He had wanted to give her life again, bring her back no matter how happy she may be elsewhere, just to say it once.

His chances are over at fifty-four. Morgan, the unit chief since Hotch took his leave, offers a hand and a smile. Spencer remembers the day that he had told Morgan he'd had enough. He can't explain why he's stayed in the field for so long, but explaining retirement had been easy. _I just can't do it anymore. _

Morgan says, "I can't tell you how much it means to me, that you've been my friend and partner for all these years. It's remarkable, but… Reid. I guess this is it."

It is. Spencer's out of chances. He's finally lost the last fragment of redemption that he had shared wordlessly with every member of his team. He doesn't tell Morgan that he has no idea what to do with himself now that it's over. In the last few days, he's already read a handful of books in preparation for the spare hours. He's begun to catch up on a lifetime of missed sleep.

But what will he do once sleeping begins to feel like waiting?

He could say it now, and it's so close from spilling from his mouth that he almost can't catch it behind his teeth. He doesn't. He just lets go of the handshake so he can shuffle around the periphery of the desk and hug his best friend.

"Thank you," Spencer says, and, remembering the surprise party his family has planned for this weekend, adds, "I'll see you on Saturday."

xXx

xXx

At the age of sixty-seven, Spencer had not been expecting the phone call. He can't believe it even after he's stepped off the plane, his wheelie carry-on trailing behind him. JJ having staggered their arrivals to avoid suspicion, he is the first to visit the nurse's station, where an RN in soafoam green scrubs points him to room 618 with a smile.

She's asleep when he first enters the room, so he sinks into a chair and stretches his stiff knee out beneath the bed, hooking the handle of his cane on to the armrest as he does. At the clink of his cane on metal—the sound isn't loud, but it stands out amidst the soft beeps and the soft corridor whispers like a firecracker—she opens her eyes.

The human body has a slight but definite reaction upon facial recognition. The eyes widen almost imperceptibly, eyebrows twitching upward and back again so quick that the average person never sees it. In the moment their eyes catch, there's a lag between contact and the reaction. Spencer shouldn't be so surprised—each has aged enough in the last thirty-seven years, three months, and nineteen days that he couldn't expect her to recognize him—but he is. And when the look finally crosses her face, he is almost overcome.

He could say so many things. His brain brims with unsorted notions, some as extraneous as yesterday's news broadcast and other things huge—monstrous questions that have kept by him all his life. The kind that followed him home from the office and sat up with him late nights at his kitchen table, when all he could do was stare into a glass of warm milk and wonder.

He could tell her that the rest of them were already on their way, that Rossi would have given anything to see her this last time. That Garcia had adopted Sergio despite her fear of combining cats with electronics, and that he lived to be old enough to smoke and gamble. That when Hotch finally retired, it was on his own terms and not, as they had often feared, on a stretcher. That he understands what it means to keep silent for borrowed time—Ian Doyle could have jammed the cylinder of a gun into his mouth and rattled it against his teeth and still he wouldn't have said a word. That he never expected to live long enough to see her today, and that any obscure fact he could say would be to get the feeling back into his mouth.

But no. As he and she survey one another for the first time, Spencer knows that he doesn't need to fill her in on the things she's missed. To someone with untreated, end stage cancer, nothing matters more than the exact moment in which she's breathing. This is a woman who has had to choose as he has chosen. She has listened for her whole life, speaking only superficially, treating her pasts as if they were passages in an especially creative novel. They have been figments in one another's memory for so long that meeting now is like meeting for the very first time.

She has always been braver than he, stronger even when she's weaker; she moves first. Her forearm shifts on the blanket, travels just far enough across a tangle of IVs to turn her palm upward. Spencer, hardly breathing for fear of a breakdown, reaches through the gap to take her hand. There's nothing soft about this reunion. His mouth is twisting over itself to keep back a sob. His insides stagger when he presses her hand between his. Her fragile frame conveys a silent calm that has nothing to do with the painkillers simmering in her arteries.

Her gray hair falls away from her face when she tilts her head on the pillow, and when she smiles, it's with such unbridled joy that neither can keep the emotion from spilling out their eyes.

"Spencer Reid," she says. Her breath catches in a swollen hiccup. "You're here. My _family_."

In the presence of such mortality, Spencer hears her and feels painfully clear how far his memory has failed him. He has fed off his own perception for so long that he had had forgotten the sound of her voice. He had remembered moments and things, gestures and the sentiment they conveyed. In his wobbling path from denial to acceptance, he had lost the tangible reality—that she was, and has been, as certain as the pulse thrumming against his fingers.

He could say it now, with tears leaking from their eyes and trembling smiles on their lips, but he doesn't. Because goodbye is such a long word, really, and they could exchange life stories in the time it would take to move from mind to mouth. Because he's dwelled on it for so long that it's the last thing he needs to hear, and all he wants while seated beside this hospital bed is their mutual deafness to outside noise. Their eyes relaying history, smile lines the deepest of all the creases. After years of waiting, watching case after brutal case open and close, spinning with his hands clamped over his mouth to keep goodbye from spilling forth, he doesn't need it any more.

After years of worry, he feels that the nails she used to pick until they bled are smooth and clean.

Spencer had moved on save for one chunk of himself, that piece that waited years for this chance. The last word. But now, as he leans across the mattress on his elbows and lifts her fingers to his lips, he won't poison her with something as ugly as goodbye. Instead he opts for the beautiful, the one that's struck soft against the sharpest guilt and grief, the only word Spencer knows:

"Emily."

xXx

xXx

_Fin._


	8. The Bottom

A/n: I wrote this on a whim today. I have been reading a lot of stream-of-consciousness recently and thought that it might be fun to try. And when I tried to think of a situation in which it would be most appropriate, this is the one that comes to mind. I realize the fandom has beaten the "Reid on Drugs" trope to death, but I'm not quite over it!

Prompt: Reid at his very lowest point before recovery.

WARNINGS: Drug abuse, prostitution. Also, angst (but perhaps that's a given).

Disclaimer: I own nothing at all.

Thanks for reading!

* * *

_The Bottom_

Spencer realized he was on the metro some time after swiping his card through and climbing on. He was not sure where he was headed but the aching in his belly told him where he ought to go, and he looked down and was glad to see that he had put shoes on this time at least.

There was a woman sitting across from where he stood swaying in the middle of the platform with one hand gripping the overhead bar. She was wearing a purple hijab and he thought she was very pretty but she would look a lot nicer if she wasn't looking at him with that disdain on her face, her lips in one fine line and her eyebrows together. What did she care what he was doing, she should know he'd saved her life a lot of times from all the different UnSubs, you never knew where they were going to end up and D.C. was a pretty big tourist destination.

He was coming down pretty quick now and his heart wasn't racing like it should be, and he worried a little bit that it might stop altogether if he didn't get a pick-me-up. Which was kind of a silly thing to think. He could not be sure exactly what he was burning through like fever but the guy had said it was good so it must be good, after all he was a very trusted dealer of the area (he had checked on his computer just to be safe and then to be safer he deleted his computer history). Today was a kind of miserable day. Three more kids dead before they found the guy huddled in his apartment with a knife to the little girl's temple. At least she lived but she will never ever be the same because you can't be after something like that. It's too much.

He turned and looked at the map of the metro and stuck his finger on the stop that brought him to work every day, and then he turned and said very nicely to the pretty woman, "This is my stop."

"Good for you," she said, still very grouchy.

"Thank you," he said.

Somehow he got off the train at the right stop, and he stepped out into the dark and started to walk. He left his watch at home because it itched on his skin but it must be late because there was nobody out here but him and a lot of fine mist hanging over everything. It made the light posts shine and the orange glow moved like they were giant match sticks towering above him. A black SUV turned the corner in his direction. He ducked into the closest alleyway, scared that it was Morgan looking for him. Morgan had never been to his house but maybe he felt bad because of Emily telling him what he said about Gideon's letter and thought they should spend some time together. But when he got to the house nobody was there, and Spencer chuckled because he thought that Morgan wouldn't see anything at home but his badge and his gun (he didn't want to lose those yet. Well he did but not out on the street, only if he gave them back to Hotch), and he wouldn't even find his stuff because he had it all in his bag right now! Sagging back against the brick face, he picked up the leather flap of his bag and took out a bottle and unscrewed the little cap and took a long drink.

It was not good to mix drugs but drinking was okay because alcohol was not a drug technically and anyway he was coming off it now. For a while he had felt good but now he was starting to feel bad, bad like going into a friend's house late at night and finding his badge and gun and a letter with his own name on it. It was good to feel normal again, great at the beginning and then normal for a long time before he started to feel bad again. All he needed now was a friend and once he found one they could both feel better and then he had to go home and go to work in the morning. You see he had told himself that he needed more sleep because he had not slept in a few days and if Hotch caught him not all in his brain then he would fire him and so he needed to stop, but tonight he had a special treat after a long time of holding back because that poor little girl would never be the same and he knew what that was like.

He walked down the way past blurry bricks stacked high up toward the dark sky until he came upon a place where the women waited at night. If they were awake all night he wondered where they slept and when, because the sun was too bright during the day to even take a nap, and he had tried. Sleeping with a woman was one of the most wonderful things, even though you had to pay, and he sometimes thought that they really did like him. He did not hit them and he only said nice things and he always shared whatever he was using that night, and really what could be a better system than mutual consensual pleasure?

The ladies had pegged him the first time for preferring blondes but they were wrong. And then the brunette girl snagged his tie and called him handsome and asked if he could take care of her, and he said no again. And finally he got to know a girl with dark red hair named Sheri, who had a petite little nose like JJ but at least she didn't have platinum curls like her or concerned brown eyes like Emily. When he asked her name the first time she said _Sherry like the drink_ but he always thought like _ma chérie_ as it was a much more beautiful translation. Tonight he found her standing back away from the others with a cigarette sticking out from the crux of her fingers and sending smoke signals up into the cold air.

"Fancy seeing you on a Tuesday night," she said. "I always thought you more a Friday man."

His hands were in his pockets because the tremor had already begun coursing through him, an unbidden side effect of excitement and withdrawal's hesitation already falling over him like the building's shadow.

"Got home early."

"Well good for you. Walk with me, sweetheart."

She linked his arm and lead him off to their place, and he didn't look the motel manager in the eye when he paid him because you just never know if you'll see him again and he didn't want to remember him if he came back tomorrow on a case.

The room was dark and dingy and yellow from the desk lamp, and even though this was his first time in this room it was familiar because it was just like all the others. Even that fake Salvador Dali framed over the TV was the same in every room, except someone put their cigarette out in the bathtub and burned a black mark into the plastic. The room was musty smelling but Sherri's hair was very clean and when he kissed her he smelled that instead. Then he took a pit stop in the bathroom and when he came out he found she had gone through his bag because she knew he wouldn't hit her. He knew that sometimes people didn't think they could help themselves but he knew they could. Hitting someone, what a terrible terrible thing to do. She passed him his bottle and they both took a drink, and then she took off his tie and looped it around his arm while he dug through all the things he brought. Tonight he had a vial of something clearish that wasn't the pure dilaudid he liked because the serenity was not quite the same, but it was good enough. And it made him long for company like Sherri, so much he had to bite down with his nails on his knees to keep from jumping her now. He was coming down slow but sure and the part of him that hated himself most kept saying that maybe he should quit and call someone or something to just talk it out, but he also drank enough tonight to smother that part.

He shot up first. On the jet ride home he played cards with JJ and calculated how much he could take tonight and still be functional in the morning. It was two doses, two or three, and he couldn't remember how much he had taken tonight but it would take about a hundred thirty-two shots of espresso to kill him so he was probably good. The wave rolled over him before he even passed the vial and syringe over to Sherri and his limbs became heavy and his mind wonderfully blank and yet he had more energy and he was ready to go now right _now_. But he waited very patient until ma chérie dropped his tie down across the bed and draped herself across him with a breathy sigh.

"You got a condom, sweetheart?" she said because he always brought one or two at least.

"I don't know," he said. He always knew everything, or so they always said, and it was nice to not think of anything for a bit and just count the yellowy spackle dots on the ceiling.

She dug through his bag some more. "You're out," she said.

"That's okay," he said.

Very slowly she undressed him and he watched through eyes half-lidded and then they just went with it for a while. It was good and she didn't even mention how tight his chest was stretched over his ribs these days, and he knew it probably wasn't true but he let himself believe that she actually did like him because he was mostly harmless and he never even thought once about what it might be like to put a knife to her gut just to feel her blood—someone had thought that once! Someone… someone he knew, and it was very familiar but also far away and he pushed the thought out because it was just too much. Too too much.

He fell asleep after they were done acting like animals answering to their very basic instincts and when he woke up—

Sherri was gone, and so was his money. Spencer allowed himself to lay for a moment across the dirty queen-size bed before heaving himself upright. The sun was just pressing up against the blinds, a pinkish morning glow. He checked his bag a second time to make sure the rest of his belongings were there—he'd evidently left his gun and badge at home, along with everything worth more than his metro card.

The digital alarm clock read 5:49 in glowing green numbers. If he left now, he could get to the BAU and shower before the rest of the team got there. He had a towel and a change of clothes in his locker. He had a razor, too, and he hadn't bought new shaving cream in a while but he would have to make due for today. There was a coffee place on the way, too. What he wanted was green tea, but he could buy a few cups of coffee and drink them on the way, and then make some more in the bullpen before his shower (as long as Hotch hadn't arrived yet), and then have one more with the rest of the team before getting to work…

He was not even thirty and he had already begun destroying his life beyond visible repair. Spencer had not asked for this. Sometimes, on mornings like this when he woke up feeling just as swollen and empty as before, he forgot how he had gotten here. How he had tried, albeit feebly, to stop in the beginning, and now every moment after was a struggle. There was nobody to blame. Tobias—the name brought forth a wave of terrible nausea that had nothing to do with his combination hangover—was gone. The others must have thought him cured by now, it had been so long (and so had he, for a short time. Until the letter).

Spencer rubbed his eyes, climbed out of bed, dressed, packed his things, and left the room. He felt terrible for the maid who was to change the sheets and considered leaving a tip, until he recalled that all his cash had disappeared. So Spencer went down the concrete steps and handed his key over to the attendant, trying as he did to hide under his hair. Just before passing through the front door, he double-checked his sleeves.

He almost wished that someone on the team would notice and not say anything, just let him suffer on in silence. It was a terrible thing to wish upon the ones you loved, but the thought lingered still. It was far easier, after all, to carry on like this when you hate someone more than you hate yourself.

xXx

_4 October 2011_


End file.
